1. Browning's Trumpeter: The Correspondence of Robert Browning and Frederick J. Furnivall 1872–1889, ed. Peterson, William S. (Washington, D.C.: Decatur House Press, 1979), p. 195.Google Scholar

2. The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett 1845–1846, ed. Kintner, Elvan, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1969), 1, 389Google Scholar, followed by quotations from pp. 380 and 404.

3. The fullest and most nearly accurate account of the copy is “The J. S. Mill Marginalia in Robert Browning's Pauline: A History and Transcription,” by Peterson, William S. and Standley, Fred L., in Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 66 (1972), 135–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar I have used the copy itself. It is interesting to note that the very similar account of the general nature of the poem in the copy which is missing from the Turnbull Library in New Zealand had been printed as early as 1881, in A Bibliography of Robert Browning, from 1833 to 1881, compiled by Frederick J. Furnivall (London, 1881: “Browning Society Papers, No. 2”).

4. MrsOrr, Sutherland, A Handbook to the Works of Robert Browning (London: George Bell, 1885), p. 20n.Google Scholar

5. Hood, Thurman L., Browning's Ancient Classical Sources (Cambridge, Mass., 1922), pp. 6, 93Google Scholar (offprint from Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. 33).Google Scholar

6. Agamemnon, II. 956–57Google Scholar; Antigone, II.523, 916–20Google Scholar; Ajax, , II.323–25 and 342–43Google Scholar; Choephoroe, II.1021–23, 1026–27.Google Scholar Hood contents himself (quite reasonably) with a reference to the Agamemnon as a whole, and comments that “especially” lines 808–22 of the Antigone are relevant. Browning provides line-references to his quotations.

7. Cf. Peterson, William S., “A Re-Examination of Robert Browning's Prose Life of Strafford,” Browning Newsletter, No. 3 (Fall, 1969), pp. 12–22Google Scholar, an article with which I am in substantial agreement.

8. New Letters of Robert Browning, ed. DeVane, William C. and Knickerbocker, Kenneth (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950), p. 284Google Scholar, followed by quotations from pp. 291,294, and 297.

9. Strafford: A Tragedy. By Robert Browning, ed. Hickey, Emily H. (London: Bell, 1884), pp. v, vii.Google Scholar

10. Kelley, Philip and Hudson, Ronald, comp., The Brownings' Correspondence: A Checklist (New York: Browning Institute; Arkansas City, Kans.: Wedgestone Press, 1978), 83:182.Google Scholar I have corrected “Greek” to “Queen” and “Go on” to “Go now.”

11. Letters of Robert Browning Collected by Thomas J. Wise, ed. Hood, Thurman L. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1933), p. 2.Google Scholar

12. Browning's, headnotes to Sordello, III, 615, 639.Google Scholar

13. New Letters, pp. 18–19.Google Scholar

14. Robert Browning and Alfred Domett, ed. Kenyon, Frederic G. (London: Smith, Elder, 1906), p. 28.Google Scholar The copy is now in the British Library.

15. For convenience' sake I give line-references to my edition of the Poetical Works 1833–1864 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970, corrected reprint 1975).Google Scholar

16. The Diary of Alfred Domett 1872–1885, ed. Horsman, E. A. (London: Oxford University Press, 1953), p. 49.Google Scholar

17. “Letters from Robert Browning to the Rev. J. D. Williams, 1874–1889,” ed. Thomas J. Collins, assisted by Pickering, Walter J., in Browning Institute Studies, 4 (1976), 38–39.Google Scholar

18. Diary, pp. 63–64.Google Scholar

19. Browning to his American Friends, ed. Hudson, Gertrude Reese (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1965), p. 360Google Scholar: “quadrupedans sonitus” alludes to the AEneid, VIII. 596.Google Scholar An explicit statement by Browning himself occurs in a letter to his cousin Charles P. Browning: “there is no historical incident whatever commemorated by the Poem you mention, – which I wrote at sea, off the African coast, with a merely general impression of the characteristic warfare and besieging which abound in the Annals of Flanders. This accounts for some difficulties in the time and space occupied by the ride in one night” (Letters, pp. 215–16).Google Scholar

20. New Letters, p. 300.Google Scholar

21. See “Robert Browning's Answers to Questions concerning some of his Poems” by Brockington, A. Allen, reprinted from the Cornhill Magazine (March 1914)Google Scholar in New Poems by Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, ed. SirKenyon, Frederic G. (London: Smith, Elder, 1914), pp. 175 ff.Google Scholar

22. Collingwood, W. G., The Life and Work of John Ruskin, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (London: Methuen, 1893), I, 200.Google Scholar

23. Diary, p. 48.Google Scholar

24. Diary, pp. 149–50.Google Scholar

25. Trumpeter, p. 48.Google Scholar DeVane commends Hood's view that Browning probably “knew the matter of the Scholia through Schlegel, Meineke, Symonds and others” (DeVane, William C., A Browning Handbook, 2nd ed. [New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1955], p. 380)Google Scholar, but any suggestion that he did not also know the original works of scholarship seems implausible.

26. Diary, p. 209.Google Scholar

27. Collins, , p. 46.Google Scholar No reference is required for “The distances”: the references to “The missed Train” occur mainly in Part III: “the ‘Palm-cinctured City’” occurs in Easter-Day, 1.625.Google Scholar

28. Crowder, Ashby Bland, “The Inn Album: A Record of 1875,” Browning Institute Studies, 2 (1974), 45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On p. 62 (n. 5) Crowder points out that “Ess” was another perfume made by the same company.

29. “To a Lady: Of the Characters of Women,” I.12.Google Scholar

30. Trumpeter, p. 34, followed by a quotation from p. 150.Google Scholar

31. Learned Lady: Letters from Robert Browning to Mrs. Thomas Fitz Gerald 1876–1889, ed. McAleer, Edward C. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966), pp. 155–57.Google Scholar

32. The Shorter Poems of Robert Browning, ed. DeVane, William C. (New York: Crofts, 1934), p. 383.Google Scholar

33. This letter is quoted by Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke as “Browning's Note” on the poem. In a letter to Furnivall about the same time Browning complained about an absurd misreading of the poem, with the comment: “This comes of the critics reading attentively the criticisms of their brethren, and paying no attention at all to the text criticized” (Trumpeter, p. 69).Google Scholar

34. Trumpeter, pp. 154–55.Google Scholar On p. 158 Browning attempts a prose version of “To be or not to be.”

35. Wording and Rewording (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977).Google Scholar

36. Collins, , p. 38.Google Scholar

37. He explained to Furnivall that the word “twats” in Pippa Passes (IV.ii.96) had been suggested to him by a Royalist rhyme, and that “the word struck me as a distinctive part of a nun's attire that might fitly pair off with the cowl appropriated to a monk” (Trumpeter, p. 135).Google Scholar As Peterson notes, the blunder was recorded in OED.

38. Diary, p. 99.Google Scholar

39. Checklist, 67:33.Google Scholar I am most grateful to my co-editor, Margaret Smith, for her comments on a draft of this article.